An insider’s point of view as to why most blogs fail.
As important as it is to know how to create and keep a successful blog, it is probably more important to understand why blogs fail and how to avoid this.
It’s no easy feat keeping a blog going, it requires hard work and lots of understanding and learning along the way, especially when you’re competing with 500 million other bloggers.
That’s right. According to one source, there are 1.6 billion websites in the world, and 500 million of those are blogs. But how many of these blogs are considered successful, and how many of them are fizzling out?
It takes a lot of hard work to make a blog successful. Years of dedication, and picking yourself up when things go wrong, but it doesn’t have to be hard work to keep your blog from failing. It’s bittersweet knowing there are so many blogs failing, but from their mistakes, there are lessons to learn.
So what can we learn from those who have failed?
Why do most blogs fail?
There can be numerous reasons as to why a blog fails so let’s take a look at some:
You don’t take blogging seriously
It’s important to understand that one of the most significant factors of a failing blog is down to not taking it seriously.
Apparently, within the first three months of creating a new blog, people give up purely because they don’t see results as quickly as they had hoped.
People, please, you will read time and time again that blogging isn’t a get rich quick scheme. It takes time to get results, whether that’s earning money from your blog or gaining more readers, so just persevere.
It’s common sense with anything that if you work harder and smarter, you will get to where you want to be quicker, and that’s the same with your blog. If your goal is to turn your blog into a business (eventually full time), then you need to put in the hours. Seriously, it’s all about sacrifice.
If your goal is to run a blog as a hobby, then you fit your hobby into your lifestyle, but if your blog isn’t getting enough traffic, then you need to put in the hours to drive traffic to your blog. Don’t create a blog just to sit and wait for success to happen, because it won’t.
Bloggers lose motivation and interest due to the lack of results
We’ve touched on this in the point above, but it’s true, people quit too soon. It’s easy to become frustrated and disappointed when we don’t see the results we want, especially when we feel like we’ve put in the hard work, but when faced with this, there are two ways to go.
You can either be a quitter, and you’ll never get anywhere with your blog, or you can reevaluate and make the changes to get to where you need to be. Everything positive that you do towards your blog is progress, no matter how small it is.
If you feel completely overwhelmed, simply take a mental break from it and figure out what would be the best way forward for you.
The content isn’t engaging or actionable
Some bloggers tend to forget that they’re not just writing to write; they are writing to help, inspire, and support their readers.
If your content doesn’t put the reader first, then who is it for? You’re not writing for you, you’re writing for them. If a blog doesn’t offer engaging content that is in the reader’s interests, then guess what? The reader isn’t going to be interested and will find what they are looking for somewhere else.
If you are struggling to find things to write about, which will benefit your audience, then there are a couple of things you can do:
- Check your analytics to see which of your posts have the most traffic. This will give you a good idea into what your readers like to read on your blog and alternatively will show you which posts have the least amount of views.
- Check your competitor’s analytics to see what they are writing about and what’s popular. Get inspired by their content, but don’t copy. Remember, you need to put your own spin on things, offer your own voice, and create content for your own audience first.
- Simply ask your audience. Run a poll to see what they want to know more about or actually read your comments, take notice, and get into conversations with your readers. They will tell you what they need, and you just need to listen.
Your blog doesn’t stand out
Many blogs simply don’t stand out enough to be remembered, which is harsh but true. It’s a real challenge to get noticed in an ever-growing market, but it isn’t impossible.
As mentioned above, whatever content you write, you need to make it your own, but you also need to make your blog worthy enough for other more established blogs to want to connect with you.
What can you offer other blogs in exchange for recognition? How can you help them and their audience for them to help you in return? What sets you aside from other blogs who want the same recognition? It could be the way you write or the way you offer help. You could have a knack of simplifying complicated information. It could be the awesome visual infographics you create, and it could be your resources.
The trickiest part of this is figuring it out for yourself, but it’s a question only you know the answer to.
You focus on content over promotion
One mistake many bloggers make is focusing on creating content over advertising. You might be familiar with the phrase ‘content is king,’ and it is true, content is so important for your blog but what’s the point in creating amazing content but not pushing it for the world to see?
There are bloggers out there who spend days creating fantastic content, and then they publish it. That’s it. What happens after they post it? They wait. And they wait. And they wait for readers to come.
People, it doesn’t work like that. Sure, you might do your basic SEO, or you might even really kick SEO ass, but you’ve still got to promote on various platforms and in different ways such as social media, email newsletter, inbound links, and ads.
You’re not networking like your blog depends on it
Networking is a key factor in any business, including blogging, so you shouldn’t put it to the side. Networking allows you to build relationships, build on your brand and get your stuff out there, so it’s fair to say it’s important to network to death, and don’t be scared to do so.
The more you network, the more comfortable you will become with it, and it will seriously work wonders for your blog but also your confidence. You will find that you can talk about your work with more ease and have more human interaction, making you more approachable to your audience, new potential readers, and other relevant bloggers in your niche (who can help you grow your blog).
Don’t be fooled into thinking you can build a successful blog without the help of others.
Social media is the only place you promote
Social media is a great platform to use to promote your blog, but it shouldn’t be the only thing you rely on when it comes to promotion. It’s a sad truth that people assume that because social media is so big, they are going to get tremendous results from it and thousands of shares, but this isn’t how it works, sorry.
There are so many reasons why promoting on social media has to be done strategically and not just willy nilly. Social media has its own set of algorithms, it has its own set of times of when to get the best reach, but most importantly, it relies on traffic – yet again. Imagine spending the time posting your content to your social media platforms that are small and inactive, where are you going to get with that?
Let’s conclude this, social media is useful to promote your blog, but it’s not the most potent form of promoting, and it won’t give you the most success.
You’re not spending money on ads
My belief with advertising is this – don’t pay for advertising unless you know how to benefit from it thoroughly, and you have the budget to back it. Otherwise, you will hemorrhage money and not gain any back. Simple concept, right?
Let me tell you something, traffic-generating advertising is so powerful no matter what business you run and will seriously make the difference. Spending money on advertising and promoting is not a waste of time. It will help get you from A – Z, but you need to invest wisely.
There is no new traffic
So what does everything you’ve read above lead to? The ultimate death of a blog – not getting new traffic. Think about it. Bloggers give up because they do not see results, they don’t write engaging content, so they don’t get new traffic, they’re not advertising properly, so they don’t get new traffic!
Traffic is essentially the be-all and end-all of a blog, and you need to be continually striving to build your audience through every single method we have spoken about here.
Conclusion
It’s so important that you don’t leave this post without taking anything on board, this advice and the lessons you learn could ultimately save your blog. Let’s have a quick round-up of the main reasons why blogs fail (just to remind you one more time!):
- You don’t take blogging seriously
- Loss of motivation and interest due to the lack of results
- No engaging or actionable content
- You blend in
- Heavy focus on content over promotion
- Not networking enough
- Relying on only social media to promote
- Not spending money on ads
- You’re not getting new traffic
If you are a blogger wondering whether you should call it quits on your blog or not, then I hope we have provided some support and advice to guide you forward. Try our tips and see if they make a difference to your blog.
